Bangkok, and: Clutch

Abstract

Bangkok, and: Clutch Kai Coggin (bio) Bangkok i Nothing of Bangkokresounds in my bones,no smells,no sounds,no images etched onto rice paper memory,the passing lightof Gleaming Golden Imperial Dragon Bargesgliding down the murky central khlong,the dirty river marketplace of softened producesold from leathered old women in congested tiny boats.The Golden Barges of the King making waves,rocking floating fruit huts, souring in the heat. Nothing of this is from my memory—I am putting together pieces as I write,and creating a scene in my mindthat is dressed like a memory,but Bangkok may as well be Alaskacold in its un-remembrance,like I was never even there,like I was not bornat (King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital)on the first day of the year,on the first year of the decade,the first child in a marriage that held desperately to lasting. [End Page 146] ii Trauma does funny things to memory—inserts clouded grey areas,sometimes over whole years,loses connections to colors, sounds,but I know from pictures that I wore adi√erent colored gingham-print dress to school every day,Monday was green, or Tuesday blue,I know for sure Friday was yellow,I always loved the yellow dress becausethe yellow and white blended into something like sunshineand didn’t look so … gingham,and Friday was yellow, or Thursday,and my face looks so happy,I can almost smell the rust on those monkey bars,but don’t remember that I could climb them. iii When Bangkok was rippedout of my seven-year-old handsand my father went away with my country,I dropped all my memories out of a tiny hatchin the airplane headed for America,just let them slip from my tiny fingers,underneath my oversized seat,each one falling through the life preserver,through the cold cloud-covered metal of the airplane bellyand into the oblivion of skyand the widest ocean I have ever seen,but don’t remember seeing. [End Page 147] Clutch (after Diane Seuss) I drive to a playground most likely and just listen to them laugh,watch as they spark conversations with each other, melt insideat imagination leading and questions not far behind, they glowoutside of me, and my womb is an empty field of bleeding hearts.If there is truly the taste of regret stirred into this poem, it is warm milkleaking from my breast into nothing’s mouth, it is hands formedinto cradle rocking no one, back and forth, my lips forming silentsongs lullabying goodbyes to whom was never born into hello.I drive to a playground most likely, walk toward the whimsy of their day,sit on a small horse on a fat metal spring, and sway like a ghost.This is the road of regret that leads to the grass underfoot of ache,the sigh of tomorrows empty of growing, the cycles of my uncreated childrenstill sitting somewhere as stardust, hovering over me waitingfor the clutch of my hand to break through the sky. [End Page 148] Kai Coggin Kai Coggin (she/her) is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Mining for Stardust (FlowerSong Press, 2021) and INCANDESCENT (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019). She is a queer woman of color who thinks Black Lives Matter, a teaching artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council and Arkansas Learning Through the Arts, and host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry. Recently awarded the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award, named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times, and nominated as Hot Springs Woman of the Year, her fierce and powerful poetry has been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize, as well as Bettering American Poetry 2015, and Best of the Net 2016, 2018, 2021—awarded in 2022. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Best of the Net, Cultural Weekly, SOLSTICE, Bellevue Literary Review, TAB, Lavender Review, Tupelo Press, West Trestle Review, and elsewhere. Coggin is associate editor at the The Rise Up Review, and serves on...